


who lives, who dies, who tells your story

by lettersfromnowhere



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Gen, Heavy Angst, alternate scenarios fic, because I love blatantly manipulative angst and the dynamic of these three, heavy themes but absolutely nothing graphic, multiple scenarios that all involve death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:20:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24905974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lettersfromnowhere/pseuds/lettersfromnowhere
Summary: How it could've happened: saving his friend is a no-brainer.How it might've happened: this time it's too late.How it should've happened: the room goes dead-silent before the long-held sigh of relief.How it really happened: this, he supposes, is one final gift.Any way the blow falls, someone loses. Or: three ways that death could touch three friends who've seen too much, and the one way that it did.
Relationships: Aang & Katara & Zuko, Aang & Katara (Avatar), Aang/Katara (Avatar), Katara & Zuko (Avatar), Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 82





	who lives, who dies, who tells your story

**Author's Note:**

> I'M SORRY BUT WHEN AN IDEA SIEZES YOU IN THE CAR AND TAKES HOLD OF YOUR BRAIN SO TIGHTLY THAT YOU ALMOST START SOBBING IN THE MIDDLE OF A SIX-LANE HIGHWAY AT RUSH HOUR WHILE "PAYPHONE" BLARES IN THE BACKGROUND, YOU MUST WRITE IT. I DO NOT MAKE THE RULES. 
> 
> I'M SORRY. 
> 
> There's nothing bloody or graphic here but there's also really no escaping the fact that this is, quite literally, a story about death and what it does to people, so if that's not something you feel comfortable with, please take care of yourself. I hope I tagged everything that might be disturbing about this story clearly but in case I didn't, here is one last completely unambiguous content warning: contains non-graphic accounts of assassination attempts (some succeed), allusions to grief, and maternal death. 
> 
> That said, for those of you who want to keep going, please enjoy. Also. If you REALLY want to cry, listen to "Uneven Odds" by Sleeping at Last while you read because iF I HAD TO SUFFER Y'ALL DO TOO. Also for clarification: Aang and Katara are married in two of these and Zuko and Katara are married in the other two. It should be clear which is which but in case it isn’t I wanted to clear that up.

**_i. how it could've happened_ **

They're walking together when it happens, talking about a tricky peace negotiation that makes Zuko's blood boil every time he thinks about it after the fact because _all_ he can think about when he hears the words "Earth Kingdom" and "reparations" in the same sentence is the _panic_ of that moment. There's not a guard in sight when they hear the _swish_ of metal leaving sheaths and the men ambush and somehow, _somehow,_ the two are outnumbered enough to be badly outmatched. 

Zuko regrets the complacency that a few years of peace have lulled him into, because it means he's without backup now, and two of the most powerful Benders alive are still no match for an entire squadron of dissidents. The Phoenix Society wanted Ozai on the throne, then Azula when Ozai passed on two years back - but privately, Zuko wonders if it was more likely that they wanted him off the throne more than they wanted anyone else _on_ it - and somehow, _somehow,_ they've slipped into the palace, and now he and Aang are cornered, and he doesn't see the blow coming. 

But Aang does. 

And by the time the guards reach them it's too late. 

* * *

"I should've done better." 

It's the funeral, and Katara is shuddering in Zuko's arms, all the grief she'd shielded from the public bubbling up to the surface now that she's alone with her closest friend. "No," she sobs, fisting her hands in the fabric of his white funeral robes. "It's n-not your f-fault. It's _not!"_

Losing Aang was a monumental blow in and of itself but, as he tries and fails to comfort the dear friend whom his indiscretion made a widow, the magnitude of his grief grows to an unbearable size. "He did it to save _me,_ Katara," he rasps, on the verge of tears himself. "Of course it's-" 

"The world needs you, Zuko," Katara protests. "I don't blame him. I would've done the-" 

"Katara, _please-"_

"-same." 

"Please," he gasps, clinging to her as if she is all that stops him from plunging into a ravine. "I can't lose you too." 

_I can't lose another person to my own stupidity. To my own position._

Katara grabs just as tight, because she, too, is unmoored, and she'll never stop regretting that her husband made the choice he did but she _cannot_ find it in herself to blame Zuko when she can see _exactly_ why Aang did what he did. "Never," she mumbles into his shoulder. 

Once she might've loved him the way she loved Aang but she's not sure; what she _does_ know is that her entire heart belongs to each and every one of her friends, especially this one, and she will never leave. 

"I'm sorry," Zuko says again, and this time she doesn't even try to respond as they break together. 

* * *

_**ii. how it might've happened** _

They break into the royal chambers in the wee hours expecting three. 

Though the Princess' birth is celebrated by most, the infant has also stirred up discord without lifting a tiny finger, and the palace is on high alert. The Fire Lady never lets her newborn daughter out of sight and the Fire Lord would do the same if he were given the choice (and he's never stopped being slightly put-out that he hasn't). The mere thought of his little family fills his heart, and that of something happening to one of them...

Well. He doesn't know what he might be driven to if the worst were to come to pass. 

So he regrets that he can't watch them nearly as much as he'd like. Duty calls in the daylight hours, and Katara and Izumi sleep in separate chambers at Katara's insistence ("I can't let her wake _both_ of us at all hours of the night," she'd said when he protested that he wanted his girls nearer to him). Though they're as heavily-guarded as his own, it makes him nervous, passing whole nights without the two people most closely entrusted to his protection. He decidedly does not like it. He misses his baby, misses the way Katara fits in his arms as they sleep like she was made to be there, misses waking up to her soft breathing and her skin against his and her hair splayed out against the red satin of their sheets. But she refuses to return until Izumi can be trusted to sleep peacefully.

But the night a group of assassins burst into his chambers, he's eternally grateful that he is the only one there when, still half-asleep, he manages to redirect only half of a faceless assailant's lightning blast and takes the brunt of the rest. 

Katara rushes to his side and the threat is quickly dispatched but this time, the lightning reaches his heart before she does. 

* * *

Aang can't help but observe what a cruel reversal of fate this is. After all, lightning was the catalyst for the romance that led Katara to this moment, standing in the Fire Nation palace in white mourning robes - lightning was what made them realize that what they shared was too precious to throw away. If he chooses to think about it that way, a bolt of lightning just like the one that felled the Fire Lord is what brought the two together.

And now lightning's torn them apart.

"All I can think about is Izumi," Katara confides in him, her face raw with tears and utterly desolate. "How I _swore_ I was never going to let my baby grow up without a father and-and-" she trails off and breaks down sobbing in his arms. "If only I'd been in the same-" 

"Katara, _no."_ He has to stop her there. "What do you think Zuko would think if he heard you say that?" 

She sniffles and he breaks all over again. He may have once wished with all his might that she'd made a different choice, but she'd been happy, and now she was miserable, and to hear her express a preference for death to the life she found herself living rent his heart. 

"I could've done something," she says, burying her face in his robes. 

"You can't redirect lightning, Katara." He doesn't want to say it but they both know that she would've died alongside her husband if she'd not been in a different room that night. "You can't even imagine what it would've done to me if I lost _both_ of you-"

"You wouldn't have!" Katara cries, grief turning to fury. "I could've done it. I could've saved him!" 

She's out of breath and red-faced and her entire expression reads despair, and Aang wishes a _million_ times over that it would've been him who'd died and not Zuko if only so he'd never have to see this brokenness on Katara's face. 

He does not argue. 

* * *

**_iii. how it should've happened_ **

They're together this time and that is their saving grace. Even with the haunted look in Aang's eyes at the realization of what they've had to do to stay alive, even when Katara breaks down in tears because she'd sworn never to bloodbend and yet when her husband's life was at stake (and her best friend's, and her own), she broke her own cardinal rule, they are _together_ and _alive._

The Fire Lord and Lady up their security the next day. But for now they simply share their relief, and when they return to their chambers, they clutch each other tight and whisper sweet reassurances, and Zuko falls asleep with his cheek pressed to the ever-so-slight protrusion of Katara's abdomen. 

He dreams of a little girl with blue eyes set in a pale face that night and when he wakes, he clutches his wife and presses feather-light kisses to the skin that's stretched over the place where their Princess grows. Katara's deep in sleep and she doesn't stir. She's lying on her side, beautifully and undeniably _alive,_ the sun dancing against the chocolate curls splayed out against her pillow.

He thanks Agni every day for the chance to call her his wife, but _especially_ this one. They were so close to losing each other but here they are, together and whole, and she's never been more beautiful, and he's never been more grateful.

 _Never again,_ he thinks.

* * *

**_iv. how it really happened_ **

He's holding her hand with one of his and their son with the other, and she gives him a watery smile that takes more of her than she has to give. Then she tells him she loves him, and asks if her father and brother have made it yet, and then she begins to ramble about how much she'd like sea prunes and he feels her forehead and finds it's burning up, and he flies into a panic and calls for healers but there's nothing they can do. 

She breathes her last deliriously debating whether she'd like a bowl of sea prunes with fire flakes or with cinnamon, and _everything_ about this makes Aang's heart clench, but _especially_ that. Katara's lived a life most people couldn't dream of packing into triple the number of years she was given. She ended a war, saw the world, made countless impacts more far-reaching than he'll ever know, and she deserved last words worthy of that legacy but instead she got _sea prunes._

And now he holds a motherless baby boy in his arms and weeps uncontrollably because Katara can _heal people,_ and she's delivered countless babies, and somehow _this_ was what brought his unstoppable wife to her end. 

It just isn't _fair._

* * *

Privately, Aang thinks Katara might almost be proud to know she had the power to bring the Avatar and the Fire Lord to their knees at the same time, if she didn't know what she'd done to accomplish it. He and Zuko orbit around each other at the funeral, two who loved her - _loved,_ and it'll never stop sounding _wrong_ in the past tense - and don't see the point of denying it anymore. 

Aang's always known that Zuko loved Katara, but Zuko was too good a friend and too good a man to admit it, and he almost bitterly thinks that if he _had_ admitted it, Katara might still be here. Of course, he was the one who got to be with her in the end and it's the greatest gift he's ever received, but he finds himself almost resentful of the fact that he did right now because he can't shake the feeling that in loving Katara he killed her. 

Then Zuko speaks up, cradling his friend's infant son. Aang just _knows_ that he barely has the strength to so much as look at the baby but he's offered to hold him anyway; he's grateful for that. “I’m glad you got time."

"So am I," Aang says hollowly, and it seems so woefully inadequate, but there’s little else he can think to say.

"And I’m glad she was happy," Zuko continues, the lump in his throat making words harder with every passing moment. "With you. I’m glad you made her happy."

Aang finally looks at him. "You loved her, didn’t you?"

Zuko dips his already-bowed head in acknowledgement. Hiding seems futile right now that she's gone. "I’m sorry."

"Don’t be." His voice cracks. "If she’d known that - if she chose you-"

"Aang, don't," Zuko says forcefully. "You had a life with her. Never be anything but grateful for that."

He waits a breath before he ignores Zuko’s admonition. He _is,_ more than anything, and he wonders if that's selfish when their love took him from the both of them, from a world that still needed her and a helpless little boy who needed her even more. _She'd hate to know our son is growing up motherless,_ he thinks with a pang he'd give anything to soothe.

He's quiet when he finally speaks up. "If she’d chosen you, she might still be here."

"You don't know that," Zuko tries to reassure him.   
  


Maybe he doesn't, but it gives him hope to imagine a life in which she's still here with them, her laugh ringing through these halls. He thinks he'd do anything for that future, even if it meant the years they spent together faded into nothing and the child she cradled had golden eyes instead of grey ones. 

Once he'd thought he'd die without her but over the years he'd realized that the preposition in that sentence was wrong. Perhaps as a child his love of her had been one of attachment and not sacrifice but now he knows that he'd die _for_ her love before he'd die _without_ it, and if it meant she was alive and well and happy he'd gladly give up the bliss she'd brought him. Even if it broke him to the very core, he'd give it all back if it'd restore her life. 

And he knows he couldn't, but looking at Zuko - his noble, dutiful, forever-regretful best friend who'd already done exactly that and failed to save her even so - Aang wishes futilely, one last time, that he could've made a deal, worked out some sort of trade, sacrificed something that would restore the love of his life. 

But he can't, and all he has left are memories and a grey-eyed baby and he's got to make them count. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'M. SORRY. 
> 
> ok so I swear that the fact that these scenarios lend credence to Aang's theory that Katara would've lived if she'd chosen Zuko is NOT intentional nor is it anti-Kataang salt (bc I may be a diehard zutarian but I am very proudly adverse to fandom salt and I tried to give Kataang a respectful portrayal here) but 
> 
> sometimes the story shakes out that way. It be like that sometimes


End file.
